Sotomayor, J., dissenting
brutal murder of Matthew Shepard? Matthew was targeted by two men, tortured, tied to a buck fence, and left to die for who he was. See K. Drake, Gay Man Beaten, Burned and Left Tied to Fence, Casper Star-Tribune, Oct. 10, 1998, p. A1. Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history? See S. Stolberg, For Gays Across America, a Massacre Punctuates Fitful Gains, N. Y. Times, June 13, 2016, p. A1. Rates of violent victimization are still significantly higher for LGBT people, with transgender persons particularly vulnerable to attack. See Dept. of Justice, J. Truman & R. Morgan, Violent Victimization by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, 2017–2020 (2022).
Determined not to live as “social outcasts,” Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9), LGBT people have risen up. The social movement for LGBT rights has been long and complex. See L. Faderman, The Gay Revolution (2015) (Faderman). But if there ever was an “earthquake,” it occurred in the final days of June in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Id., at 169. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar with a “varied and lively clientele.” Id., at 171. Its “ ‘unruly’ element” made it “an especially inviting target” for police raids. J. D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities 231 (1983) (D’Emilio). “Patrons of the Stonewall tended to be young and nonwhite. Many were drag queens….” Ibid. Just before midnight on June 27, the New York police’s Public Morals Squad showed up to the bar and started making arrests. Drag queens, for example, were arrested for offenses like being “disguised” in “unnatural attire.” N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §240.35(4) (West 1967).
What started out as a fairly routine police raid, however, became anything but. Outside the Stonewall Inn, patrons who had been thrown out started to form a crowd. “Jeers and catcalls arose from the onlookers when a paddy wagon departed with the bartender, the Stonewall’s bouncer, and
